On the Importance of Storytelling in a STEM-Centric World

This blog is the public place where I explore relationships between my feelings and my thoughts and between others and myself/Self.  My last blog was about the relationship between my husband, and, by extension, many other enthusiasts, and the game of American football.  Why I feel the need to discover the relationships between my feelings and thoughts is directly related to one of this website’s purposes: Inviting visitors to learn about how including the body in our storytelling supports our healing desires and intentions.

Because I learned the importance of storytelling as a child and solidified the conviction of storytelling’s value as an impressionable teen, I have been “in relationship” with story’s gifts and challenges for seven decades.  Not a day goes by that I do not seek the vital healing power of stories told by people I know as well as people I will never meet.  I have this story-seeking impulse because of a seven-month caged quarantine when I was two, an isolating experience that left me without the sense of belonging everyone needs in order to thrive as confident and joyful creatures. I tell the story of my quest to heal from this experience in Once Upon a Body: Creating Meaning, Peace, and Joy after Early Trauma.

Ending the isolation that is the legacy of traumas early and late, common and uncommon, is the main purpose of this website and my work in the world.  Learning through story that we are more like other people than different is the key to healing.  Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) are a storytelling means of body inclusion to dispel feelings of isolation by first compassionately reuniting an individual’s body/mind/heart/spirit and then connecting the individual with others’ experiences of isolation and suffering through empathy.  The process of gentle and gradual individual healing supported by consistent use of EFT leads to important family and social reconnections and, ultimately, to a growing sense of belonging within the vast human and greater-than-human family.

Storytelling’s power is rare and growing rarer because we have created a culture that values scientific evidence – isolated pieces of information rather than complete stories – as the most important validator of knowledge.  Our current funding of STEM courses – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – at the expense of what we call the Liberal Arts is happening at every level of formal education.  Libraries are replaced by video arcades, human creativity by Artificial Intelligence bots, and the Arts by “practical” courses leading to technologically dependent jobs.

And yet we need both science and the arts as sources of knowledge if we are to navigate the world wisely and compassionately.  Actual bridges constructed by engineers and mathematicians are vital, but so are the metaphoric bridges we learn from prose, dramas, poetry, and the “softer” sciences of sociology and anthropology.  Without these metaphoric bridges, traumatic isolation becomes the norm, something we experience with horror as we read of yet another war crime, mass shooting, insult-driven political power-play, and environmental loss directly related to human, technologically-driven activity. Oil spills from ruptured pipelines and tankers are just one piece of grisly evidence proving our shrinking ability to imagine the harm we are doing to our Earth Home.

What’s the remedy?  Read a story like this essay, one that emphasizes our connection to one another and our shared planet.  Tell a story that makes you smile, makes you weep, makes you take courage.  Find a story you want to share, or summon the courage to tell your own story, not as an accusation, proof of rightness, or statement of victimization, but as quest for meaning, for peace, for connection.  When we are isolated by our physical challenges and emotional traumas, darkness falls; when we tell the story of our isolation in order to explore and share our suffering, the very act of telling illuminates our connections to others.

May we value the physical bridges as well as the storytelling bridges connecting us one to another.   We need more and more light in these dark times.  Our stories – when told with the intention to repair and to connect – hold light and spread light. When we hear and tell these stories, we hold and spread their light, making it our own.

If you can, take action to form or join a storytelling community.  Visit a library to find a storytelling group formed to explore the experiences that have separated you from others.  Join a Twelve-Step Group to connect with others who understand your personal experiences of isolation and suffering. Write a letter to the editor of a local paper to express your desire to find local communities of healing thought and action. And when words fail, dance to express your feelings and your thoughts.  The body, the ultimate story authority on what connects and what isolates, will faithfully guide us into greater connection when we attend to our physical sensations of loss and yearnings for that sense of belonging lost to trauma. On the journey to connections with others, sing your woes and triumphs in the shower.  Your expressions of sorrow and joy will renew your energies and support your growing feelings of well being.

Whatever we choose as our main source of storytelling and story-listening, we become involved in creating a different story, the story of belonging.  And when we rediscover our sense of belonging, we participate in creating the shared story of maturing into a loving and responsible version of humankind.  In this revised story, we care for our embodied selves, all our fellow creatures, and our planet.

Which ever part of this inclusive story we make our own, it will enliven our days and nights with the deep sense of belonging that makes our time on Earth the profoundest of gifts.  May you discover this gift.  May it bless you daily.

Until next time

Jane

EFT and Renewal

As we expand into the warmth and light of 2019’s Summer energies, I think of our human populations here in the northern hemisphere as Light Repositories. In our bones we know this Light is already on the wane, having reached its peak of brilliance on the Summer Solstice, this year marked on June 21st. Here in Northeastern Vermont, neighbours on farms and in villages and towns gather to honour this pinnacle of Light and the official beginning of Summer. In our human expressions of gratitude for this season, we light our bonfires at night, our answering Response to the Sun’s glorious Call . . . to grow . . . to shine.

The four seasons we experience in the northern hemisphere are all about Renewal, the energy fuel powering both self-regulation and resilience. Regular periods of conscious renewal can make the difference between creative, joyful living and that other, driven way that can creep into our days and rob us of peace, well being, and even sleep. Summer Solstice renewal is all about embracing our ability to take in and reflect Light, both metaphorical and actual. We need the Sun’s warmth as surely as all species do, to feel whole. Stepping out into the Light of this new season, our feet bare, our hearts open, can help us to weather those inevitable dark times to come.

EFT supports renewal. Each day, a morning gratitude meditation while tapping through the points brings us home to the emotions of sacredness and belonging. Whatever our experiences, including high ACES, the loss of a Beloved, or the wearing stresses of a toxic work place, we can settle into the home our bodies provide when we are well regulated and in touch with the supportive energies of the seasons. This season, Summer, is all about action, moving out into the world with our gifts, connecting in heart space, growing through the pain of the larger world’s back story. Here, beneath our feet, Life stirs. Our outer fields are green and growing. They call to our inner landscapes to do likewise.

Because I believe we are always influenced by the larger stories of the world whether we consciously attend to learning about these or not, I spend time judiciously reading about current events through a variety of sources I can count on for reliable information. This research about current world events is very much like entering the lion’s den. I go into these information pools with my tapping and writing skills at hand, employing these to return to safety whenever I find the news threatening.

Knowing we are attached to the larger stories whether we are aware of our attachment or not has been knowledge that has served me well over the decades of my life. Now books reflect the influence of family and cultural histories, giving us context for our challenges. The person struggling with alcohol learns this is a family pattern begun perhaps when a veteran returned from the first World War and had no place to explore his grief and terror, emotions prowling around in his body until the alcohol temporarily relieves him of these profoundly disturbing feelings. Daily focused use of EFT clears personal challenges regarding our individual histories and gives us perspective on those patterns that come down to us through our individual families and cultures. This is why EFT is so essential to our renewal.

Renewal is always about strengthening our ability to know and to grow through our discoveries, positive and challenging. EFT along with Summer energies support our human endeavours to renew, to continue to contribute to our families, our communities, and our workplaces in positive ways. Renewal informs our relationship to the sacred space of this season. It prompts us to sit in the Sun, to absorb the Light and the heat, and to feel the eons of joy this loving relationship between Sun and Earth has nurtured since the Time before time.

Taking time – for stillness, for beauty, for deep gratitude for the natural world – acts as a tonic for our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits. Our connection to this universal wholeness, unbreakable even when we are busy with other thoughts and activities, is the source of true power to live well and love our place in the world, whatever form that may take. This is the experience of renewal, of Renewal.

Whatever our season . . . , may we all look up and out to rediscover the magnificence of which we are an essential and inseparable part.

Until next time,

Jane

Visit www.eftinternational.org to learn more about how the use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) supports the resolution of inner and outer conflicts, informs more loving and respectful relationships, and empowers its users to contribute to the changes we want to see in the world.

Jane is an EFT International Accredited Master Trainer,  writer, coach, and educator specializing in neutralizing the long-term effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)  as well as the cultural limitations that interfere with our ability to imagine, create, and live the lives we desire.  To engage Jane for individual or group coaching services, EFT International(AAMET)  Accredited, Certified Mentoring sessions,  and EFT Level One and Two Training for your group, call Jane at  (802) 533-9277 or email   jane@winterblooms.net .  Visit www.winterblooms.net to learn more about how Jane supports and inspires individuals, groups, and communities.

Please Note:  This educational website cannot replace therapy with certified psychologists, family therapists, or psychiatrists.  Before certifiying with EFT International, Jane taught at the elementary, secondary, and college levels, in Ontario, and at the Community College of Vermont. She is an early trauma survivor who works exclusively as a learning coach in the best practices of EFT.  She created this website to support the most effective use of EFT to reduce general and specific stresses and to increase the joy of daily living through self regulation and pro-social experiences.

The Deep Dark Blessings of Winter Solstice

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website created to support the most effective use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).  To experience the benefits of EFT for in-the-moment emotional support and long-term emotional resilience, contact Jane (802) 533-9277 / jane@winterblooms.net.  Visit www.aamet.org and www.neftti.com to learn more about how EFT can support the peaceful resolution of inner and outer conflicts, inform more loving relationships, and empower its practitioners to contribute to the changes we want to see in the world, 

Here in the northern hemisphere, we are passing through that momentary still point we call Winter Solstice.  This longest night of the year, calls us to gather in candle-lit rooms to share stories told in words, music, dance, and feasting, stories that promise our very survival with the return of warmth and light.  Hunkering down, together and alone, by fireside, candle, or electric hearth, this season of Renewal invites us to rest, to reflect, to touch the marrow of our lives on a planet dancing through space in rhythms so gracious and steadfast as to make all life grow, die back, and grow once more.  Winter Solstice brings out the poet and philosopher, the dark fear and the brilliant hope in each of us. In this time of least light, our inner eye senses our interconnections with every other being – human and non-human – with whom we share this glorious world.

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A Winter Solstice Invitation

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice arrives on Monday, December 21, 2015. Most people recognize this date as the official first day of Winter.  Others mark it as the return of the growing light, those longer days that makes Spring possible in only three short months.
But the Winter Solstice is more than the first day of winter and the promise of spring; it also offers us an invitation to cultivate deep contemplation regarding a whole new cycle of death, birth, fruition, decay, death, and rebirth.  However you have marked this day in the past, may you find a meaningful, even ceremonial way of welcoming the Winter Solstice this season and the greater perspective it brings regarding the eternal round of life and death here on Planet Earth.

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Our Vital Need for Renewal

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

On this Spring Equinox, 2015, in the Northern Hemisphere on our beautiful, beleaguered planet, our thoughts naturally turn to Spring and the renewal we begin to sense all around us.  Here in Vermont that renewal is evident in the alternating warm and cold days that precipitate the sugaring season.  So much of what is essential in life we learn from the natural world . . . cycles of growth and rest perhaps among the most important of these lessons.  Learning to rest, to turn inward, to reflect on the interconnections among our thoughts and actions and the world we live in, is at the heart of renewal and the hallmark of maturity.  Never have we needed this mature practice more than we need it now.

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Renewal through Seasonal Changes

Happy Spring Equinox . . . at least here in the Northern Hemisphere.  Down under folks are moving into autumn, this difference one of the many magical expressions of hemisphere diversity on our magnificent planet.  Looking out my window at the five-and-six-foot piles of snow our snow-plow Angel has created makes Spring seem unlikely, and yet the calendar tells us the Vernal Equinox officially arrived on March 20.  Sometimes, we have to take on faith the reality of something.

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Renewal through Visualization

Most of us have heard of the remarkable results professional athletes achieve when they incorporate visualization into their training schedule.  Imagining oneself accomplishing a goal activates the same areas of the brain as the act; for example, seeing oneself sink a foul shot on the basketball court registers in the same way as actually sinking the shot.  Research indicates improvements in performance when visualization is used along with regular practice.  To explore this research, visit www.eftuniverse.com’s home page and click on the Scientific Research tab.

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Renewal by Proxy

This is the time of year when local markets begin to sell seeds and peat pots to nourish our hopes for gloriously fertile summer gardens.  Recently at Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier, staff set out pots of flowering spring bulbs next to revolving stands of Vermont’s own High Mowing Organic Seeds.  People rushing in to get last minute supper things slowed as they approached the flowers and seeds, the fragrance of hyacinth and daffodil catching them by surprise and the seed packets setting them to dreaming of the warm days to come.

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Renewal

In these green mountains, renewal is in the air.  Every thaw reminds us of the promise of Spring’s return.  We need such promises, not only in our out-of-doors, seasonally aware lives, but every day.  Indeed, as we age, the promise of renewal takes on a spiritual heft that is absent in our youth.  Renewal is the internal spring that visits us no matter the number of years we’ve lived on Earth.

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